Fair deal to power Scots isle

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) has awarded £250,000 to a project aimed at providing power 24 hours a day on Fair Isle in Scotland.

The £2.6m project, which is being led by community group Fair Isle Electricity Company, plans to install three 60kW wind turbines, a 50kW solar farm and battery storage on the island.

It will also extend a high voltage network to the north of the island to enable grid connections to the Scottish Water treatment works, Fair Isle Bird Observatory, an airstrip and the North Haven harbour.

The three-mile long island, which is located between Shetland and Orkney, has had a combination of wind and diesel power since the 1980s, but currently has ‘lights out’ between 11pm to 7am, HIE said.

It added that only one of the existing two wind turbines is working and has been operating intermittently over the past 18 months.

Great Glen Consulting is project manager to help take forward and develop the project on Fair Isle, while technical design and engineering will be carried out by Arcus.

Fair Isle Electricity Company was awarded over £1m earlier this year through the Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme’s (LCITP’s) funding call for large-scale transformational low carbon infrastructure demonstrator projects.

LCITP is supported by the European Regional Development Fund and is a partnership programme led by the Scottish Government.

The Fair Isle electricity scheme has also secured other funding from several partners including Big Lottery, Shetland Islands Council, National Trust for Scotland, Scottish Water, Fair Isle Electricity Company and Fair Isle Bird Observatory.

HIE Shetland area team development manager Fiona Stirling said: “This is a key project in the development plan for Fair Isle and we are delighted to support it.”

Image: an existing wind turbine on Fair Isle (Wikimedia Commons/Dave Wheeler)